


we could be immortals (just not for long)

by mekii



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: (from the marvel version), (idk it's kinda jongsan and/or ot8 centric too), (the movie version this time), Alternate Universe - Big Hero 6 Fusion, Angst, Choi Jongho as Hiro, Choi San as Go Go Tomago, Choi San-centric, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jeong Yunho as Honey Lemon, Jung Wooyoung as Wasabi, Kim Hongjoong as Fredzilla, M/M, Park Seonghwa as Baymax, Protective Choi Jongho, Song Mingi as Fred, Team as Family, but he's also a really strong boi so, choi siblings best siblings, i cant choose a san ship so choose for me plz ty, i just needed to give him some sort of power, i'm writing this for my friend and he likes seongjoong but, inspired by the movie and the marvel version so some of them have powers, jongho has a personality dw he's not just crushing apples, seonghwa's a robot can he still date hongjoong, would that be weirder than hongjoong having a ghost dino, yeosang? surprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23850829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekii/pseuds/mekii
Summary: After three of the four Choi siblings are announced dead, one of them comes back. Refusing to go through these two weeks of grief and guilt again, Jongho swears he'll do anything to keep San alive. It gets harder when a masked man appears, using their dead brother's tech to commit crimes, but if San becomes a superhero to stop him, Jongho will follow.
Relationships: Choi Jongho & Choi San, Choi Jongho & Park Seonghwa, Choi Jongho/Kang Yeosang, Choi San & Park Seonghwa, Choi San/?, Choi San/Jeong Yunho, Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Choi San/Song Mingi, Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	1. in which jongho gets comforted by hot cocoa and a grieving lesbian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hellbend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbend/gifts).



> a lot of people helped me start this fic, so thanks to everyone who "beta-ed" and/or gave me the motivation/validation i needed! big hero 6 is one of my favourite movies ever, so when my atiny bestie told me it was his too, i knew i had to write an ateez fanfic with it. i hope you'll like it!
> 
> (@ iria: i hope this'll make you stan ateez plz they're so talented and sweet)
> 
> english isn't my first language and i almost never make people beta my fics, so i'm sorry if something's wrong! i'm always open to criticism (about my grammar, plot or anything else) as long as it's constructive and not just hateful. you can leave a negative comment as long as it's respectful, i promise i won't get mad :)
> 
> as the tags said, i don't have a ship for san, idk if i can ship seongjoong and any other ship depends on who's san's dating (so, sorry jongho but you're as single as him for now!)... please leave suggestions! i've been an atiny for about a month, i don't have favourite ships yet so it's hard to choose

Jongho’s tears refuse to stop.

He can’t stop either, running in the streets in his pajamas. He’s not dressed for the rainy night and one of his shoes is soaked from that puddle he couldn’t avoid a few minutes earlier, but he doesn’t care. It’s better than staying at home.

Home, which won’t be a home anymore, not really. It will be way too empty from now on, not a home, but just a place, a too small apartment now big enough. His home died with his siblings.

Jongho chokes on a sob. He knows he’ll have to go back, knows he can’t run away forever even though he wants nothing more. Their apartment is full of memories, he can’t go back there, look at the photos on the walls, the drawings still on the fridge because their aunt cherishes everything they give ( _—gave_ ) her, their aunt probably still crying in the café after they learned the news from pure strangers with pity in their eyes…

 _Fuck_ , his aunt. 

He didn’t think about her before running away, he didn’t think she’d need him close. He was feeling trapped and needed to get out, so he put some shoes on–he’s pretty sure they’re not his–and left, still in his pajamas. He’s wearing one of Seungcheol’s old shirts, the one he likes because even it smells like his brother even after multiple trips to the washing machine.

At that, he runs faster despite his burning lungs, because physical pain is easier to deal with than the one that comes from feelings. That’s all he has left to remember his siblings now, photos and objects that belonged to them. 

Fuck, they couldn’t even find the bodies. They had an accident, the car ran into a tree and _exploded_ , because of course it did. With how the universe seems to hate the Choi family, it wasn’t merciful enough to at least let him and his aunt have bodies to bury.

It got their parents first, then decided to take almost all of them, leaving him behind. He wonders if his turn will come soon and shivers, more at the thought than because of how cold he is. Even without his siblings, Jongho doesn’t want to go, not yet. His aunt needs him, more than ever now.

He’s forced to stop and breathe when it feels like flames lick at his lungs with every step he takes; tears getting lost with the raindrops falling on his face. He’s soaked and shivering and lost and _hurt_ and he wants a hug from one of his siblings but he’s alone in the rain and they’re not waiting for him at home or anywhere else which means he’s alone and _why is it so hard to breathe when he’s not running anymore–_

“Hey.”

The hand on his shoulder shouldn’t be so comforting for a teenager in the middle of an empty street at night, but Jongho doesn’t care. Even if the other is a pure stranger, he’s not alone anymore. Besides, his little… difference means he doesn’t have to worry about losing in a fight if one happens.

“You need to breathe, take your time, don’t try to rush it in.”

It takes what seems like an eternity for Jongho to finally start crying without choking on his sobs. The stranger doesn’t seem to mind, rubbing his shoulder like he’s comforting a friend.

“My brother has really bad nightmares, so we usually play games and drink hot cocoa when he wakes up,” he says, probably to explain why he’s there at a bit past midnight. “Do you want hot cocoa too?”

Jongho shakes his head, sad but not stupid. “I’m not a kid, you’ll need more than hot cocoa to kidnap me.”

The stranger chuckles. “That’s not what I meant, but I’ll take that as a yes. Wait here?”

He runs to what’s probably his house and comes back a few minutes later, followed by a girl and another boy, who seems younger than him. They’re all carrying towels and mugs.

“There you go,” the younger boy says after handing him a towel and a mug with marshmallows. “Hyung didn’t know what kind of marshmallows you wanted so I put white only because the rainbow ones taste weird, even if noona can’t taste it.”

“They really don’t,” the girl protests, and seeing them argue like siblings do makes Jongho cry even harder.

But he’s glad he’s not alone, even if they’re strangers and kind of weird. The first boy sits down on the sidewalk, not giving a fuck about how wet it is, and wraps himself in his towel. The others follow him and sip their hot cocoa like it’s the most normal thing to do.

“Aren’t you tired of standing?”

“Shut up Min, stop bothering him.”

Jongho sits down, because the kid is right and he _is_ tired, and takes a sip. It’s nice, warm and sweet. It reminds him of San’s, which tasted like liquid hugs. He tried to make some more than once, but his hot cocoa never tasted like his brother’s. He’ll never get to drink it again.

God, now he’s crying because of a stupid _beverage_.

The girl wraps him in a second blanket and he shakes his head when he’s asked if he wants to talk. He really doesn’t want to, because it hurts, but it still feels unreal. He’s still shocked, unable to fully process that it’s not a joke and he’ll never see Seungcheol, Yena and San again, and he doesn’t hate it. If it hurts that much without completely realizing what’s happening, he really doesn’t mind running away for a little longer.

None of them drops names. For the night, they’re both best friends and strangers, giving comfort without having to know more than what they’re willing to say.

“I lost someone tonight,” the girl starts, eyes on her mug.

She’s pretty and sad, but it’s not that obvious. She seems more regretful than anything, actually. Jongho wishes he could comfort him, but he’s too sad to try to be even the tiniest bit positive. He’s not really good with words anyway and he’s not used to talk with people out of his family, so he’d rather stay silent than risk making it worse.

“Same,” is all he says, because he wants her to know he understands, even if he won’t share his thoughts about his loss.

“She was amazing, probably the bravest girl I knew, even if she was scared of coming out to her family.”

“Were you… together?”

“As girlfriends, you mean?” The girl laughs, then shrugs. “Good question. I don’t know, I don’t think she knew either. I just know I loved her. How? That too, I don’t know. I regret not talking about it when I still had her. I was scared of realizing I had a crush on her and losing her, y’know? Kinda ironic, considering how I still lost her.”

And Jongho admires her, a pure stranger who offered him hot cocoa and sat in the rain with him to talk about something he’s still denying. He knows there’s more than one way to deal with death, but it’s still strange to see her talking about her lost one with a smile on her face. Jongho doesn’t think he can say anything about his siblings for now.

“In the end, it was all as useless as wondering what would have happened if I had done something differently. She’s gone, nothing will bring her back.”

Min gets closer to her, close enough for her to rest her head on his. The older one doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes on the puddle in front of them and plays with his empty mug. Jongho wonders if he knew that girl too, if he cared about her.

“How can you talk about her?” he asks, because he needs to know. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Maybe I’m still too shocked for it to hurt that much, I don’t know. I just know there was a lot I never told her and I feel like it should be said, even if it’s not to her. I don’t know where people go when they die, but I hope she’s listening right now.”

She’s crying, but she stays still. Her brother gets rid of her tears for her, though it’s kind of useless with the rain that drowns them. Still, it’s the thought that matters.

“Of course it hurts, just not enough to stop me from talking about her. I screamed when I heard the news, I punched a wall, I even left a hole in it, but now I feel empty. I’m too tired to be angry, so I’m trying to focus on the positive for the rest of the night. I lost her, but I still had her for a while, you know? And even though I know she’d want me to take time to heal, I also know she was the kind of person who wanted to make others happy. She’d want me to think about our good times together and smile.”

Jongho looks at the other boy, the one who’s more a teenager than a child, the one who looks his age. He gets a smile and an offer for more hot cocoa, which he refuses. He’s warm enough now.

“I… I don’t know what to do,” he admits. “My house is full of memories of them, I don’t want to be there.”

“Understandable,” she sighs. “It hurts that it hurts, doesn’t it? These memories shouldn’t be painful.”

Her little brother shifts and Jongho notices the freckles on his face. They’re beautiful. San had constellations too, on his neck. He’s probably biased, but San’s constellations were prettier.

“I didn’t know them and I don’t know who they were to you,” the older brother starts, “but I don’t think they’d like this.”

“What?” 

He shrugs like it’s obvious. “This. Y’know, sitting in the rain, crying alone, in the cold… I’m sure they cared about you. Do you have someone waiting for you?”

Jongho blinks, because he does, his aunt is waiting and he ran away from her as much as he ran away from his memories. She’s probably still there, too hurt to move and too scared she won’t be there for him when he’ll be back.

“You do.” It’s a statement, not a question, probably because he noticed his reaction. “I’m sure they care too. Regret, thinking about things you could have done, that’s horrible and it doesn’t help. You’ll have to deal with it, I don’t think there’s a way to escape it, but don’t add more to the list. Whoever is waiting for you, they love you and they probably need you as much as you need them.”

That’s what makes Jongho stand up, mug and towel towards Min and his sister. He really needs a hug from his aunt and, if she needs him like he does, he has to go back.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Keep the towel, it’s still raining.”

“Not for long,” Min says with a smile. “It’s okay, noona, he won’t need it. Trust me.”

“I do, I do.” She wipes tears off her cheeks. “Be careful, okay? It’ll be okay. I can’t tell you when, but I know everything will be alright. It’s not the first time I go through this, try to focus on one thing at a time and you’ll go through the waves without drowning in them. For tonight, focus on going back. You’ll deal with everything else later. It’s okay to take baby steps.”

Jongho won’t deny it, he’s not used to interacting with people except for his aunt and siblings. He’s alone most of the time and doesn’t have friends. However, he’s not stupid and he knows most people don’t sit with a stranger–in the _rain_ –for no reason.

“Why are you trying so hard to comfort me?”

He feels bad for being rude after they stayed with him, but he’s starting to get mad at himself. He stopped counting the times Seungcheol warned him to be careful, that his trust shouldn’t go to anyone. He can handle fights, but what if they had slipped something in his hot cocoa? He can’t get trapped again, not without his siblings to save him.

“That’s what she would have wanted me to do, I guess. I’m not only doing it for her though, you looked really sad and I know how you feel, so I thought maybe I’d feel better if I helped someone like me.”

It sounds… fair. Understandable. Believable. Also, Jongho doesn’t feel worse than before drinking his hot cocoa, so he guesses there wasn’t anything weird in it. Still, he’ll have to remember to be more careful.

“Thank you,” he says again.

He turns away and starts jogging, empty of the adrenaline and sadness that had made him so fast when he left the apartment. He’s soaked when he finally gets there, but that doesn’t stop him from throwing himself at his aunt, breaking down once more and apologizing for leaving her alone, for making her worry.

Curled up on the couch, his aunt next to him, he tells her about the strangers he befriended for a night. When he describes Min and his freckles, a thought almost makes him smile: it stopped raining a few minutes after he left them.

Reality hits him the next morning and he starts believing it’ll take him a miracle to feel alive again.

Two weeks later, he gets his miracle.

San closes his eyes as soon as he opens them.

The sun is bright, too bright, and it takes him a moment to realize he’s not in his room. He doesn’t remember falling asleep on a bench in the middle of a park, but, to be fair, he doesn’t remember much from the previous night.

However, he recognizes the park as the one only five minutes away from his home. Maybe sleeping there was a drunken bet from one of his siblings, his head hurts enough for a hangover so bad he’d forget what happened before. It’s okay, he’ll get answers when he’ll get home, and if he doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing happened, he still has his phone, his wallet, his... wait. No, he doesn’t have his keys.

No problem. He often forgets them at home or just doesn’t bother taking them, trusting Yena to have them or knowing Jongho will be home when he’ll be back. No one would run away with his keys when his phone and his wallet are right there.

He takes his phone, frowns at the dead battery and sighs at the thought of walking home without any music. His body feels weird, but he blames the uncomfortable bench. It’s nothing a hot bath can’t fix, especially if he steals one of Yena’s bath bombs.

The walk back home is a bit longer than usually, which can be explained by his headache and how his body seems to have forgotten how to function. Tripping over his own feet for what must be the fourth time makes him chuckle. Yena would have her phone on him, laughing and recording the scene to post it on Instagram for his birthday, probably in a compilation of embarrassing things he did.

San is surprisingly tired when he finally sees the café’s door, but he pushes through. Pushing the door takes him way more energy than it should and his legs almost give up on him when he gets in the café and is hit by the thought that something is _wrong_. His aunt isn’t at the counter, so he walks as fast as possible towards the stairs leading to their apartment. He needs to find his aunt, his twin, Seungcheol–

“San?”

Jongho sounds shocked, pained. San doesn’t like it one bit, but he feels like he’s floating and he can’t worry about anything else at the moment.

He manages to smile, though it’s a small one.

“Yo.”

That’s the moment his legs choose to give up on him and he falls to the floor like a rag doll, right in front of Jongho, who doesn’t even blink.

Rude.


	3. update on hiatus + commissions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (i'm not abandoning this fic don't worry)

Hi!

I’m really sorry for not updating for so long. I’m in quarantine since March and I have to admit it’s affecting my motivation and inspiration more than I thought it would… I’m not abandoning any of my works, I still have ideas for all of them and I want to finish them but right now it’s really hard to be productive, especially since I’m in college now and “the pandemic we’re going through is ruining my mental health which affects my motivation and concentration” isn’t an excuse the teachers accept. Thanks to the holidays, I’m free now and maybe Christmas’ magic will let me update lol. Posting new works is easier, but updating is hard and I don’t know how to fix that.

This probably doesn’t look good after not updating for months, but I opened a Ko-Fi page. I won’t ask y’all to pay me for an update but if you want me to write something for you, I can do that! It’ll be my priority though, so please be understanding if updates take even longer while I’m writing a commission. For now, I’m asking for $3/1k words (in USD) and any extra if I’m motivated and/or inspired will be free (aka if you ask for 2k words and I write 3k, I won’t ask for an extra $3). I can write about a lot of kpop artists, mangas, etc, just ask me! We moved out this summer so I had to quit my job and I can’t find a new one because of the Covid restrictions. I’m sorry for asking money after being inactive for so long, I just really don’t know what to do…

Sorry for giving such a disappointing update. I’ll try to post a new chapter as soon as possible, but I can’t promise anything and I’m really sorry about that.

if you want a fic: comment here or dm me on twitter (@mekikyu)!

**Author's Note:**

> if you leave a comment i'll love you forever <3 and they motivate me, so comments mean i'll update faster!
> 
> twitter: @mekimingyu  
> curiouscat: @mekimingyu
> 
> (if you have twitter, don't be shy, dm me! i check dms more than i check curiouscat so it's the best way to contact me. i don't mind people asking me when i'll update or giving me criticism, but please don't send me hate!)


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